THANK YOU FOR NOT RECYCLING: Let’s Hold On to the Throwaway Society. Why did the most affluent society in history turn into a mass of neurotic hoarders? I’ve been writing for decades about the folly of the recycling movement, but I didn’t fully appreciate its stupidity — or the inanity of the anti-plastic movement — until I looked into the history of the supposedly evil “throwaway society.” From Dixie Cups to Cellophane to plastic grocery bags, disposable products were embraced because they made life better. As I write in City Journal:

Disposable products aren’t merely more convenient than the alternative; they’re also safer, particularly during a pandemic but also at any other time. And they have other virtues: the throwaway society is healthier, cleaner, more economical, less wasteful, less environmentally damaging—and yes, more “sustainable” than the green vision of utopia.

These are not new truths, even if it took the Covid-19 pandemic to reveal them again. The throwaway age began because of public-health campaigns a century ago to control the spread of pathogens. Disposable products were celebrated for decades for promoting hygiene and saving everyone time and money. It wasn’t until the 1970s that they became symbols of decadent excess, and then only because of economic and ecological fallacies repeated so often that they became conventional wisdom.

If you’re guided by history or “the science,” it’s clear that agonizing over what goes into the trash is not a universal moral imperative — and it’s not exactly a sign of spiritual enlightenment, either.